Shocking? Yes. Toxic girly thoughts, those societally determined standards of right and wrong for women that have you trying to be the good girl in so many ways—including sexually—have had a powerful effect on you. When you consider this, you know you have been conditioned by the media and the greater society to feel comfortable …Read more →

The more you engage and connect, the more engagement and connections you will have. ―Loren Weisman A common theme in psychotherapy sessions is connection. Women share that they want more connection, particularly with their intimate partners. But the way many women go about this is often self-defeating because they feel they need to fix some …Read more →

Saturday night, I literally fell asleep tweeting. I woke up after six hours and began tweeting again. This is not me. Why did this happen? I was pumped. I was tweeting about Josh Duggar and his sisters. I tweeted my outrage and my concern for the increasing number of sexual abuse survivors who are screaming …Read more →

I met Roseanna recently when I gave a talk at a university. She remembered that I asked women to share their girly thoughts, an obnoxious term I coined to describe that toxic, inner self-talk that plagues and disempowers women. Roseanna’s Contribution Roseanna send me a poem she wrote about her sister, …Read more →

Sometimes we need a study to prove something we have known for a very long time—that we have been feeling bad about ourselves for as long as we can remember. Read it and Weep In an article originally published in Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention and blogged about by …Read more →

“This is who I am and look at me not being perfect! I’m proud of that.” —Kate Winslet Girly thoughts are the way you internalize society’s messages about how you should look and should feel. They affect you on many levels, from the way you speak and write about yourself on …Read more →

I’m returning to the scene of the crime (the city I grew up in), New York City, to speak to fellow psychologists, and I’m inviting you to join me! Why? Because as women we all have girly thoughts, and together we can learn to identify them as well as strategize ways to eliminate them. I …Read more →

“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” —Ellen Johnson Sirleaf I was walking my dog this morning when a neighbor asked me where I’ve been. “I didn’t see you last week,” she offered. “I was in Nebraska,” I proudly shared, “in the land of strong prairie women, …Read more →

“You are imperfect, permanently and inevitably flawed. And you are beautiful.” —Amy Bloom Beauty should be painful? Really? It is amazing how powerful our girly thoughts are . . .yes, those thoughts that tell us we have to live up to a certain societal standard if we want to be desirable, no matter …Read more →